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Meet Julia Samuel, Prince George’s godmother and BFF to the late Princess Diana: the grief expert hails from the Guinness beer family, and is thought to have helped Meghan Markle through tough times

Julia Samuel was one of Princess Diana’s best friends, and is now Prince George’s godmother. Photo: @juliasamuelmbe, @princessdibooks/X
Julia Samuel was one of Princess Diana’s best friends, and is now Prince George’s godmother. Photo: @juliasamuelmbe, @princessdibooks/X

  • Samuel was born into the Guinness family – famous for making it big in the banking and brewing industries – and befriended Princess Diana at a house party when they were in their 20s
  • Now godmother to Prince William and Kate Middleton’s son Prince George, she is believed to have helped Meghan Markle through tough times during her pregnancy too

Therapists are skilled at helping others navigate grief, but what happens when the grief they encounter is their own?

In August 1997, Julia Samuel had been working as a counsellor for families grieving the loss of a child for several years when her close friend Princess Diana died in a car crash.
Julia Samuel with Princess Diana at Wimbledon in 1994. Photo: @SpokenEdition/X
Julia Samuel with Princess Diana at Wimbledon in 1994. Photo: @SpokenEdition/X
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“I remember clearly the shock I’d felt when she died,” Samuel shared with Time Magazine back in 2018. “The pain and subsequent fury of missing her and wanting her back.”

Twenty-seven years later, Samuel has become a leading figure in bereavement counselling in the United Kingdom, per The Guardian. In 2016, she was even appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her service.

What else do we know about the late Princess Diana’s close friend?

She hails from a privileged background

Julia Samuel in 2020. Photo: @juliasamuelmbe/Instagram
Julia Samuel in 2020. Photo: @juliasamuelmbe/Instagram

Born on September 12, 1959, in London, Samuel grew up privileged. Her father, James Edward Alexander Rundell Guinness, came from – you guessed it – the Irish family known for its dry stout beer, as well as banking. Her mother, Pauline Vivien Mander, came from an influential Midlands family.

Although Samuel and her three older sisters, along with her twin brother, were raised in comfort, they were also taught to maintain a “stiff upper lip”, according to her interview with The Guardian. It wasn’t until she married Michael Samuel of the Hill Samuel banking family at the age of 20 and became a mother of four that she began to reflect on her own parents’ struggles with addiction.

At 27, she attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with a friend and discovered that expressing one’s true feelings could be crucial in overcoming personal struggles. “Now when I look back, I think I wanted to do this work because of all the unexpressed loss of my parents,” she said in the 2022 Guardian interview. “But it took me a long time, and quite a lot of therapy to work that out.”

She’s known as a grief counsellor